I have seen this used both ways. Are both correct?
Thanks
Quasi
Depends on what you are talking about, doesn’t it. You walk foreward. You read a foreword.
Complete agreement.
Oops. Didn’t read that closely enough.
Foreward is not a word. Forward is, and it’s the direction opposite backward.
A foreword consists of what is said (“word”) at the front (“fore”) of a longer work.
Perhaps I need to clarify that I have seen Foreward used in the place of Foreword at the beginning of a book? 
Q
Then you, my friend, have seen a typo. 
Hope this helps.
… the same typo in numerous books. The question stands.
Q
Go to http://www.m-w.com
Look up “foreward”
Did it find it?
Now look up “foreword” (it’s the first suggested option when I look up “foreward”)
Still have a question?
If I put put an entire city on the march, with each alderman leading his constituency, wouldn’t the first one be the foreward?
Or would that be what I’d call when playing golf right behind the Beaver’s dad?
It’s not actually a typo. Rather it’s a gross misunderstanding of the word that has been mistakenly perpetuated. You have seen it, and I have seen it, but it is not correct. Not one bit. It is wrong, wrong, wrong.
The correct term for this particular item of front matter is FOREWORD.
Not “forward,” “foreward,” or any other orthographic abomination. KneadToKnow is correct (well, except that first post ).
Should have posted to your attention to begin with.
Quasi
Sorry to have been so useless to you, Quasimodem. I’ll avoid wasting your time in the future.
Um, thanks, Quasi, but I’m not the only grammar person here. KneadToKnow did give you the correct answer long before I showed up. KTK’s suggestion to check the dictionary would have answered your question right off.
I appreciate your confidence in me, but KTK’s no slouch!
Not necessarily, if he’d gone to www.dictionary.com he would have found:
foreward \Fore"ward`, n. The van; the front. [Obs.]
My foreward shall be drawn out all in length, Consisting equally of horse and foot. --Shak.
My question (and I wish I had been a little clearer at the outset) was had it become an accepted practice to purposely misspell the word in order to make a play on words
I can and did look up the word, and lo and behold, it doesn’t appear in m-w.
I will try to be clearer with my posts in the future. I agree that you are no slouch KTK, which is why I thought you would have seen the meaning of the OP right away.
Anyway, it was my post and I take full responsibility for not having thought it through and covered all the bases.
Q
covering all the bases!
Q
I know I’m not Scarlett so you probably don’t want to read my opinion but one of the vital skills as a copyeditor or proofreader is being able to do research. You don’t need to know it but you need to know where to look for the right info. And I don’t think asking on a messageboard is good research. A good dictionary is your friend.
I disagree.
“Anyway, it was my post and I take full responsibility for not having thought it through and [for not having] covered all the bases.”
Hard to see how these are the same question. Had you actually asked the first question, I would have observed that any book serious enough to have a foreword would be damaging its credibility by attempting such a rather lame and incomprehensible “play on words.”
Understood and appreciated.
But KTK didn’t point him to dictionary.com, but rather to m-w.com. Dictionary.com is operated by Lexico LLC, a company formed in 1995 that offers online reference services. I’ve never heard of them. (And can we consider an obsolete term from Shakespeare, who never spelled his own name the same way twice, helpful in this discussion?) OTOH, m-w.com is the online arm of Merriam-Webster, whose dictionaries are the direct descendants of Noah Webster’s work and and are the primary references for much of the book publishing industry. All dictionaries are not created equal.
See what Primaflora said: “A good dictionary is your friend.” A bad dictionary can lead you astray.
I meant, of course, that you walk foreward on a boat. You know, as opposed to aftward. 
Anyway, it is a leap to assume that an author using the word “foreward” in a book, where the foreword appears, is making a grammatical error. He may in fact be making a pun.